Tag Archives: Science

Post navigation

In typical governmental/bureaucratic fashion, we find yet another idiot policy that was implemented – it has no apparent effect – and the answer is to keep on doing what doesn’t work:

Policies that rid Maine high schools of sugary drinks seem to have had little impact on teenagers’ overall intake of sugar-laden beverages, according to a new study.

The study compared four high schools that eliminated soda and other sugar-sweetened drinks from cafeterias and vending machines with three schools that did not take such measures.

Researchers found that over one school year, students in both groups of schools cut down on their average daily intake of sugary drinks — but there was no evidence that the school soda bans led to greater reductions.

Seems like teenagers know how to get sodas and if they aren’t present in school they still will be able to satisfy their thirst as they wish. Pretty straightforward application of logical thinking supported by research findings.

And the answer from the school ‘administrators’?

Lead researcher Dr. Janet E. Whatley Blum said she would not conclude that such school policies are “ineffective” based on these findings.

Students’ consumption of sweet drinks did go down, she told Reuters Health; the study just failed to find a statistically significant difference between schools that cut back on sweetened beverages and those that did not.

Boiled down to its essence, this answer means “we didn’t find what we wanted, but that doesn’t prove anything. We are still sure we are right”.

And some hugely interesting afterhtought seems to have come to the nanny-state researcher:

On average, the study found, students at both groups of schools curbed their intake of sugary beverages to a similar degree over the school year.

According to Blum, keeping such drinks out of teenagers’ reach during school hours may not be enough.

“School appears to be just one source of sugar-sweetened beverages for youth,” she said, “and it may be that an educational component…is needed to have an effect on consumption from sources other than school.”

Do you actually mean parents might have an influence on their children’s consumption of beverages? Knock me over with a feather.

But don’t look to find any soda dispensers in those Maine schools – ever again. Nanny has spoken and even if they have to do this study over again 1000 times, they will eventually get the results that prove what they want.

“If their father is willing to continue risking his livelihood in order to continue chopping up animals in a laboratory, then his children are old enough to recognize the consequences. This guy knows what he is doing. He knows that every day that he goes into the laboratory and hurts animals that it is unreasonable not to expect consequences.”

— Dr. Jerry Vlasak, spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front

Light One Up for Animal Liberation - Kill Kill Kill

“To put this on par with any of the human rights issues is an absolute insult to the integrity of the people who fought and went through the human rights movement. This is what people do when they have an inability to articulate their point in any constructive way. They resort to primal acts of violence. Any reasonable person would need a logic transplant to begin to understand this level of degraded thinking.”

Apparently Science Digest isn’t willing to put it that bluntly, but their research does show that:

“Some poor people see playing the lottery as their best opportunity for improving their financial situations, albeit wrongly so,” said the study’s lead author Emily Haisley, a doctoral student in the Department of Organizational Behavior and Theory at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business. “The hope of getting out of poverty encourages people to continue to buy tickets, even though their chances of stumbling upon a life-changing windfall are nearly impossibly slim and buying lottery tickets in fact exacerbates the very poverty that purchasers are hoping to escape.”

The lottery is a tax on people who don’t understand mathematics. And if you don’t understand math you are more likely to be poor.

I just love the squishly little recommendation this bunch of academics makes though:

In the study, the researchers note that lotteries set off a vicious cycle that not only exploits low-income individuals’ desires to escape poverty but also directly prevents them from improving upon their financial situations. They recommend that state lottery administrators explore strategies that balance the economic burdens faced by low-income households with the need to maintain important funding streams for state governments.

So its a great revenue stream for governments (and organized crime) but they want it to be structured in such a way as to balance the economic burdens of the poor with their stupidity in playing the lotto which gives the states the money to economically exploit the poor.

James Lewis has a great article on the difference between science and the fraud that is the bovine bleatings of Algore:

In normal science the burden of proof is on the proposer. Albert Einstein had to prove in his historic 1905 paper that there was a fundamental flaw in classical physics. The distinctive predictions of Relativity Theory had to be verified for decades afterwards. Some are stillbeing tested today. His predecessor Max Planck remarked that he encountered so much skepticism that he had to wait for the older generation of physicists to die off before his work was accepted.

This is why you can always tell when the hysterical cries of “denier” start being spewn about – you aren’t dealing with science, you are dealing with faith and religion. It is not the responsibility of the man-made global warming skeptic to present their facts to disprove this religion; it is the responsibility of the tax grubbing puke putting forward this swill to prove their case. But that might just be a little difficult since:

There are no facts robust enough, consistent enough, and verified enough to support the mass hysteria. The climate system is hypercomplex, nonlinear and poorly understood. The media spinners are immensely ignorant about real science, and just care about the next scare headline. There’s a lot of wild speculation and a mob of self-serving politicians, bureaucrats and media types who stand to gain a ton of power and money by suckering millions of taxpayers. Al Gore just started a 300 million dollar PR campaign to convince everybody. When was the last time you saw 300 million bucks being spent to promote a scientific hypothesis that was already proven? We’re not spending millions to prove the existence of gravity. The uproar and money involved in this fraud is in direct proportion to the lack of solid facts.

I’d also like to actually have the Great and Powerful Gore actually prove he has 300 million of anything besides air molecules inside his skull where his brain ought to be, but that’s another case. The real truth is:

Temperatures over the last hundred years look like the stock market: ups and downs, a very slow rise of a fraction of a degree until the late 1990s, then a drop for the last ten years, with so much cooling in the last year as to cancel out a century of warming. Why? Nobody really knows, but Mr. Sun is the logical suspect.

Look it up. But don’t get caught in the trap of proving the negative. In normal, healthy science, the skeptics ask questions. It is the proponents who carry the burden of proof.

For some years now, reports have been growing from around the world that the massive amounts of synthetic birth control hormones being pumped into the water systems through sewage outflow is changing the sex of fish stocks. Recently, scientists have also begun to warn of the possible carcinogenic effects of the build-up of estrogenic chemicals in drinking water.

As early as 2002, the UK Environment Agency warned that fish stocks in British rivers were showing signs of gender ambiguity as a result of high levels of estrogen in the water. A survey of 1,500 fish at 50 river sites found more than a third of males also displayed female characteristics.

Dr. Conrad Daniel Volz from the University of Pittsburgh Center for Environmental Oncology, warned that the rise in steroid hormones in the drinking water in the Pittsburgh area is a threat to health. Numerous studies have shown a link between contraceptive estrogen and hormone problems and some cancers, including testicular cancer.

There are ecoNazis screaming about snowmobiles in Yellowstone, but possible cancer risks in the water and there’s no noise from the environmental activists at all. Wonder why?

But scientists and environmental groups are careful to avoid recommending restrictions on artificial contraceptives.

The National Catholic Register, reporting on the issue, quotes George Harden, a board member of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, saying “If you’re killing mosquitoes to save people from the West Nile virus, you can count on secular environmentalists to lay down in front of the vapour truck, claiming some potential side effect that might result from the spray,” Harden said. “But if birth control deforms fish – backed by the proof of an EPA study – and threatens the drinking supply, mum will be the word.”

Curt Cunningham, water quality issues chairman for the Rocky Mountain Chapter of Sierra Club International, told the Register that people “would not take kindly” to the suggestion of banning or restricting hormonal contraceptives.

“For many people it’s an economic necessity. It’s also a personal freedom issue,” Cunningham said.

So birth control pills are a personal freedom issue. But having the government put restrictions on your land to keep some slimy snail in breeding territory isn’t a personal freedom issue?

anti-growth, anti-human, anti-logicand heaven help us “to cheering” wants to lock up politicians who ignore science. Who decides what is the right science? Him? Just how much of today’s science was considered completely wrong 5 years ago? And what was considered truth 5 years ago that would be derided as idiocy today?

Suzuki underlined the importance of looking backward by explaining that, because the past 50 years have seen a boom in technology and population expansion, ideas of economic growth have been skewed.

“That means you have lived your entire lives in a completely unsustainable period,” Suzuki said to the young audience. “You all think [economic] growth and change is normal. It’s not.”

He urged today’s youth to speak out against politicians complicit in climate change, even suggesting they look for a legal way to throw our current political leaders in jail for ignoring science – drawing rounds of cheering and applause. Suzuki said that politicians, who never see beyond the next election, are committing a criminal act by ignoring science.

“Since the late 1960s, much of the North Atlantic Ocean has become less salty, in part due to increases in fresh water runoff induced by global warming, scientists say.”

-Michael Schirber, LiveScience
June 29, 2005

“The surface waters of the North Atlantic are getting saltier, suggests a new study of records spanning over 50 years. They found that during this time, the layer of water that makes up the top 400 metres has gradually become saltier. The seawater is probably becoming saltier due to global warming, Boyer says.”